Ein Mann ohne Bedeutung

I'll be terribly original and say this is a movie with no importance. It seems the trigger for all the story, the production of Wilder's play, is the weakest part of the movie, which should have dealt more with Finney's character and the people around him, mainly, him never being in love (he's somehow perfect for the role). Tara (as Adele) is a bit annoying, as is the fact that her character's story is mostly talked about and not seen (her being pregnant and all). The end seems kind of glued to it all, a little sad-a little happy, but more than anything a disappointing meaningless ending for an incomplete movie. Albert Finney and Brenda Fricker deserve much better.

Starring Albert Finney as a deeply closeted gay man who is a bus conductor in 1960s Dublin as he endeavours direct a production of Oscar Wilde's play "Salome".

It boasts a great supporting cast of Brenda Fricker, Michael Gambon, Rufus Sewell, Tara Fitzgerald and Patrick Malahide.

A slight film of forbidden love in early sixties Dublin. There is some great period detail and some lovely funny and touching and dark scenes, but the film IS Albert Finney - a momentous performance as a gay man desperate to consummate his passion for a man he knows he cannot have, and desperate also to create beautiful things in a grey, humdrum world which just doesn't understand him. Finney is absolutely fantastic.

There's a great deal of simple magic in this film, a loving, humorous community, a man with his mind on a project, mainly setting aside his own deepest desires - "Me arms are innocent of affection" - to try and bring joy to those around him, a handful of varied but mainly endearing characters (one of the few villains is actually pretty low-key). Tara Fitzgerald has the touching sweetness of an Emily Mortimer, even as her own simmering impulses are brought to light. Some of the incidents, given the overall theme of closeted homosexuality, are a tad predictable and overall the film often has the genial small town feeling of a modern BBC series like "Father Brown". But it is gently and warmly engaging.

In 1963's Dublin Alfred Byrne is a bus conductor who pleasures his working class passengers with poetry recitals as he punches their tickets. Head of a local theatre group, Byrne is inspired by meeting new passenger Adele Rice to drop his plans to do Importance of Being Earnest and instead go up with Salome. With the challenges to the material from those who would usually support him, Byrne also faces much more negative attention than he would usually like as various truths and secrets come out.

Although the plot does have some interesting aspects to it, it is hard to ignore how average a fist it makes of this story. The threads are there to be delivered and at its heart is Byrne, who is a complex character and one that could have been more interesting. Sadly Krishnamma cannot seem to bring this out of the script with any degree of sharpness. Although I get the idea of the mood and tone that the director was going for, the effect it has is to slow the film right down to the point where it crawls and is surprisingly unengaging. Visually the film has a nice feel of the period but the drab looks again tend to drag the film down a bit.

On paper the cast suggests that they can lift the material themselves but surprisingly nobody does and many of them deserved better. Finney's accent is pretty awful (which didn't help anything) and although he has a certain dignity befitting the character, and brings out some pain, he is never as convincing as he should have been. Fricker, Gambon, Sewell and Fitzgerald are mostly OK but they are given little to do in this film.

A fairly uninspiring affair then. There are things of interest in here but they aren't delivered that well and the film is surprisingly dull.